ELA/ELD Framework Snapshots
Snapshot 5.5 Integrated ELA/Literacy, ELD and the Visual Arts in Grade Five
The students in Mrs. Louis-Dewar's fifth grade class have enjoyed their study of art from various
regions in the United States. Today, she plans to share Grant Wood's painting American Gothic. Because she
wants to support the sentence combining skills the students' have been working on during language arts, she
decides to share only half of the image at a time. She covers the right portion of the print of the painting so
only the woman and part of the building and landscape in the background are displayed. Mrs. Louis-Dewar
asks the students to view the image for a moment, then turn to a neighbor and tell what they observe. Then,
she asks for volunteers to share one observation with the class.
Peter says, "I see a woman." Erica offers, "She’s wearing an apron." Mrs. Louis-Dewar records their
observations on her tablet and projects them on the smart board. Danny shares a more detailed complex
sentence and she praises his use of a complex sentence, yet she encourages him to restate his ideas as
individual simple sentences. She comments that in this task, every idea needs to be expressed as a simple
sentence; these will be used later to build more complex ones. Next, she covers the left half of the image and
reveals the right half. Before asking for a whole class sharing, she gives the students a few minutes to
individually generate a list of sentences describing what they see in this portion of the painting. After, as they
share out some of their sentences, she records them on her tablet.
Mrs. Louis-Dewar then displays the entire image, and the students describe what they see and note
how each half of the work contributes to the whole. The class discusses the artwork noticing and identifying
nuances in the painting and using the vocabulary of the visual arts, such as harmony and balance. They
comment on the artist's choices of color and ask questions about the subjects depicted and the time period
in which the work was set.
Mrs. Louis-Dewar returns to the students' sentences and asks them to work with a partner to
combine sentences from the two lists to generate a paragraph describing the image. She models doing so
and ensures that students understand what is expected. One example she models is a simple sentence with
an expanded noun phrase, and another example is a complex sentence. William and Molly get straight to the
task and, after generating and refining their first sentences, settle on "The balding bespectacled farmer holds
a pitchfork as he stands next to the woman in black attire partially covered by a brown apron. The two are
unsmiling, and perhaps unhappy, as they gaze into the distance, the white farmhouse and red barn at their
backs." Both partners record the sentences. They continue to develop their paragraph, adding adjectives,
adverbs, and prepositional phrases to their sentences and using subordinate conjunctions to create complex
sentences and coordinate conjunctions to create compound sentences. They read their sentences aloud to
each other to hear how they sound and ask Mrs. Louis-Dewar for assistance with punctuation.
Mrs. Louis-Dewar circulates through the room assisting student pairs as needed by providing
feedback and language prompts. When every pair has finished writing and refining their paragraphs, she has
each student practice reading aloud the jointly constructed paragraphs with his or her partner. Then they
separate, each taking their own copy in hand, and individually meet with other students to read aloud their
paragraph and listen to several other paragraphs. Finally, the class reconvenes and discusses the activity and
the process of generating interesting sentences and paragraphs that capture the art they viewed. They are
impressed with themselves and are eager to learn more about the painting and the artist.
CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy Standards: L.5.3a; W.5.10 CA ELD Standards: ELD.PI.5.1, 2, 3, 7, 10b, 12a; ELD.PII.5.1-7
Related Visual Arts and Performing Arts Content Standards: Visual Arts 1.1 Identify and describe characteristics of representational,
abstract, and nonrepresentational works of art. Visual Arts 1.3 Use their knowledge of all the elements of art to describe similarities
and differences in works of art and in the environment. Visual Arts 3.3 Identify and compare works of art from various regions in the
United States. Visual Arts 4.1 Identify how selected principles of design are used in a work of art and how they affect personal
responses to and evaluation of the work of art.
© 2014 by the California Department of Education.